That's a nice looking 350F Trevor
It's another bike I've owned for over 30 years. When I bought it, no-one seemed to like them. I bought it because I really liked the way it looked. In that 30+ years, it's gone from a lemon to desirable. Yep, they are pretty slow, but if I want to ride fast, I'll hop on my Suzuki Bandit 1200 (like I did yesterday)!
Apart from the mighty CB750, I've never liked any of the other SOHC4's, but the 350F is a sentimental favourite, a mate of my big brother had one, and when I was 14 or 15 he brought it around to our place and threw me the keys, and told me his date of birth if I got pulled over by the cops. I rode it from Bairnsdale to Lindenow and back, and thought I was in motorcycle heaven. I was a little smaller and lighter back then, and I'm sure I saw 100 MPH on the speedo, and the note was just superb.
In 1995 I went to the Bendigo Swap meet and there was a rotten old 350F on a trailer. The seller was Jim Parker, when he was still struggling in the early years of his Indian motorcycle restoration business. He'd taken the 350F in exchange from some work, and was gutted that no-one wanted to buy it. He told me that he'd dragged it from swap meet to swap meet, and even though it supposedly ran, by now the fuel was stale and the battery was stuffed. I asked how much, he said 600, I laughed and started to walk off. Back then I could still buy a CB750 for a doller per cc.
He yelled after me, "Make me an offer!", so I walked back, opened my wallet in fron of him so he could see I wasn't lying, and said, "I've got 250 bucks here, take it or leave it". He took it. I dragged it back to my cousin's site and my mate Pete said, "How are you gonna get that pile of sh1t home?". I said, "I'm gonna put it in your trailer and you're gonna drop it off". Luckily for me, he did, as I didn't have a plan B. Back then I was still in the Army and worked part time at a gas station. I worked a 14 hour shift every Saturday and got paid $200, cash in hand. On Monday I'd go to K&W Motorcycles in Bell Street West Heidelberg, and either Rex Wolfedon or Johnnie Budge would take my 200 beans, and give me a (very) small bag of NOS parts.
Over 6 months or so, that was my weekly routine. They were that impressed (or more likely pitied me) that Johhny Budge sold me his NOS 4 into 4 pipes that he was saving for his 350/4 resto for 400 bucks, and they slipped a few extras into the weekly bag as they could see that I was serious. When it was finished, it looked like new. No Ebay back then, but still a lot of NOS parts, and chrome plating wasn't stupidly expensive like it is now. My mate John, who swapped the lathe for my 350F told me that Andrew Johnson, who was working for Honda MPE had told the guys at work about it, and they'd missed out on buying it, to use in an advert apparently. I haven't see it again for sale anywhere so I'm guessing that the German guy still has it.
